this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Before the pandemic, my old company allowed us to remote work on occasion, but it was rare. With the pandemic we started to work from home regularly and it was a game changer. Little bit after the pandemic they forced us to go back to the office (also, in summer, in spain, to a office with broken AC), so I changed jobs.
Best decision I ever had. The company I work for now is US based, so obviously its remote only for me. There's a big culture shift, both from being American and for being remote focused, but I think its fantastic. Never have been as productive in my life.
There's a great difference between companies allowing remote and being remote oriented as well. Management has to fully buy into it and promote using remote tools, otherwise it won't work.
How was the adjustment in office/work culture between Spain and US for you?
Maybe I'm an ignorant American, but isn't work culture much more relaxed in Spain than much of the US? "Siestas" and all that?
No one takes siestas in a office job in Spain lol.
The job is more casual and friendly in America for sure. It can change between companies of course, but in general in Spain, there's a lot more consulting firms and less product oriented companies. So more PWC and similar.
In general the biggest adjustament has been the tme offset. There's 6h difference with most of the team, so I start late morning and end up late afternoon, which is a bit of a pain since you can really make effective use of the time. Since they are also all working when Im leaving, I very often have meetings or stuff making the day even longer, sometimes even late night, which sucks.
I don't know what the relative humidity is like wherever in Spain you are, but if they had the windows open -- and I assume that they could open and did, if the AC was offline and people were in there in the summer -- and the humidity was low enough, could have thrown a portable evaporative cooler next to yourself. That can't get things as cold as a sufficiently-powerful air conditioner, but it's got a lot more punch than just a fan.
We did have the windows open, and the put some fans, but still was quite unbereable. Especially because of all the computers. We did have a lot of fights with the company for this, as spanish law dictates a maximum temp for a working space. Some days, when it was over 40ºC inside, it was like an oven (literally it was better to go outside below a tree or something), we ended up walking out of the office, fuck that shit.